Nicoleta Iolanda RusEmerging translator Italian into Romanian

'A translator of technical texts has to be a good researcher, a translator of novels has to be a good writer. It requires creativity.'

Nicoleta Iolanda Rus (1992) was born in Sângeorz - Băi, Romania. She grew up in Pravisdomini in the north of Italy and graduated from the University of Udine where she studied English, German and Spanish. During this period, thanks to the Erasmus studies and other scholarships she had different experiences abroad: at the Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany and at the Technical University of Cartagena, Spain where she worked as an International Relations Officer. During her stay in Spain she was granted another scholarship for a Master’s in Editorial Translations. Nicoleta is currently living in Murcia, Spain where she is working as a translator and a teacher.

‘When I hear a language, I want to learn it. It all boils down to that, I think,’ says Nicoleta Iolanda Rus. ‘I work as a language teacher, but I’m glad it’s not a full-time job. I like to be alone, I love silence: translation offers a perfect way to isolate myself for a while.’ To begin with, Rus mainly translated technical texts, but more recently she has also been translating literature. ‘The difference is huge. A translator of technical texts has to be a good researcher, a translator of novels has to be a good writer. It requires creativity. And self-confidence, something I have developed in recent years. If you’d asked me to translate a novel two years ago, I would have said no: I wouldn’t have had the courage.’